Man Sentenced After Admitting to Sexual Assaults

A former Bow resident was sentenced to prison time yesterday after an investigation into molestation allegations against him made by a family member.

On March 24, 2015, Judge Richard McNamara of Merrimack County Superior Court sentenced Gerald Upton Jr., 70, of Vermont to one to three years in prison, after he pled guilty to a single count of aggravated felonious sexual assault and two counts of felonious sexual assault. He also received suspended sentences on condition of good behavior in prison and completion of a sex offender treatment and education program.

Upton, the proprietor of Upton Construction, a local home building and trucking business in Bow, and a past member of the town’s Conservation Commission, admitted that during the 1980s, he sexually molested a family member numerous times when the girl was between 11- and 14-years-old.

The two-year investigation into the allegations started when a family member heard about allegations against Upton by a girl in Vermont in 2011 that were never prosecuted. That family member decided to go to police with her allegations against Upton. She found out later from Detective Stacy Blanchette of the Bow Police Department that the statute of limitations had expired on her case though.

About a year later, another family member heard about the situation and stepped forward with her own allegations. Blanchette, who was in court with the family yesterday, then built a case against Upton, along with help from the Merrimack County Advocacy Center and several interviews and witnesses. She combed through 45 years of allegations, with family members assisting with the investigation. The acts against the family member, according to the case, occurred at the family’s home on Allen Road in Bow, and in Hooksett, while in Upton’s truck.

During the impact statement, the victim, who is in her 40s, spoke about her difficult, post-abuse life, from weight and health issues in her teens to taunting and bullying at school, and problems as an adult, too, including numerous marriages and divorces, and the loss of a proper relationship with Upton and other members of the family, due to the abuse.

“It has been a long road to find the strength to place accountability squarely where it belongs, on him,” she said. “The abuse I suffered is part of my daily life and it always will be.”

She said she decided to come forward after seeing the innocence of her own children who are about the same age now that she was then, “an innocence that will never return.” She said the estrangement between family members also caused issues, including Upton’s wife leaving him in the 1990s after first finding out about the abuse. However, justice was never brought to the victims, she said.

“So many things would be different,” she said.

Upton stood nearly silent during the entire process before being taken away in handcuffs by Merrimack County Sheriffs to begin his sentence.